One: Number 31, 1950

Jackson Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950 asks the eye to move between an immense painted field and the smallest turns of a line. MoMA describes tan, blue and grey intertwined with black and white: an energetic whole whose individual marks can also be delicate. The painting belongs to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where it is catalogued as oil and enamel paint on canvas, measuring 269.5 × 530.8 cm. Its accession number is 7.1968, and its credit is the Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection Fund, by exchange. One and Number 31 belong to this single title. At more than five metres wide, the canvas makes viewing an activity that takes time: take in its breadth, then let a smaller passage hold your attention. MoMA’s account emphasises the order sustained across a composition without one commanding focal point. That gives the viewer freedom to begin in different places. ^[1]

A painting made through movement

The size belongs to a longer ambition. In his 1947 Guggenheim fellowship application, Pollock described portable pictures occupying a position between easel painting and mural. His statement My Painting, published that winter, explains the practical attractions of an unstretched canvas against a hard surface. Working on the floor allowed him to approach from all four sides and feel physically close to the developing work. He also described a period of getting to know what he had painted, followed by changes that could transform it. The statement offers a useful way into One: movement and reconsideration could belong to the same process. His later interview with William Wright stresses the control of paint flow acquired through experience. These accounts make room for an evolving composition, shaped through the painter’s responses to it. They also help explain why the viewer’s own first impression need not settle the painting. Further attention can change the relationships that seem most compelling. ^[2]

MoMA’s opening conservation report of January 2013 brings that process down to the scale of paint touching canvas. Coddington and Hickey describe thin applications absorbed into the fibres, leaving colour without hiding the woven texture. Elsewhere, wet colours blended into one another; successive applications built smooth, glossy surfaces. Paint laid on more generously developed wrinkled skins as it dried. These differences give the composition a physical variety that the general word “drip” barely suggests. A stained area and a raised, glossy passage engage the light differently, even within a related range of colours. The report also records how dust and grime had altered colour and sheen, while the top of the canvas had darkened unevenly. Understanding the painting therefore involves both its original material contrasts and the changes those materials have undergone. The conservators’ first close examination also found passages with unusually repetitive small brushstrokes, opening a question about who had put that paint there. ^[3]

Flow, fine decisions and a change of position

The later process study identifies industrial paints throughout One, apart from occasional Naples yellow artists’ oil. Thinning produced stains, while concentrated medium was also applied separately. The authors suggest that some diffuse colour mixing may result from turpentine poured onto wet paint; this remains an inference. Near the bottom, late rust-brown drips end in small swellings and follow an underlying black passage. Their consistency and gravity-driven shape led the conservators to conclude that Pollock very probably added them with the canvas upright. Nearby pale pink spots were more likely studio accidents. This distinction makes the final stages particularly interesting: floor painting could be followed by adjustments made while the work hung on the wall. The study also reports small pieces of wood, possibly from a working stick, without settling their origin. Its account of bare canvas and controlled local additions gives the enormous field a more intimate scale of decision. ^[4]

A useful earlier comparison is Full Fathom Five, painted in 1947. At 129.2 × 76.5 cm, it has a much smaller, upright format. MoMA describes brush and palette-knife underlayers containing objects such as nails, buttons and a key, subsequently covered by poured paint. The museum’s account follows a transition from easel to floor within that painting’s making. Set beside One, it shows how much can change within a practice loosely grouped under dripping. An accumulation of objects and worked paint gives the earlier canvas a particular physical density; its dimensions invite attention within a comparatively contained area. The comparison helps separate the use of poured lines from the larger question of what those lines organise. Scale, orientation and the construction underneath them all matter. Following this earlier work gives One a place in Pollock’s development while preserving the distinct problems posed by each canvas. ^[5]

A comparison within 1950 makes a different point. The Metropolitan Museum’s Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 is almost the same height and width as One: its recorded face dimensions are 269.9 × 528.3 cm. The Met identifies its medium as oil-modified alkyd resin on canvas and relates its mural ambition to Pollock’s earlier experience of muralism. These two vast, portable paintings make a productive pair for considering how a painted field can address a room. Their size connects an individual mark with a surface extending well beyond the viewer’s immediate concentration. One can compare how each composition holds attention across that span without expecting their materials or layered histories to be identical. The shared scale makes the differences between paintings worth seeking, and gives Pollock’s wider painting career a more concrete measure than the familiar photograph of an artist pouring paint. ^[6]

The paint added after Pollock

The anomalous brushwork became the starting point for an investigation into One’s later history. MoMA’s conservation file contained no record of such treatment by its own staff. Correspondence suggested a restoration in the mid-1960s, before the museum acquired the painting in 1968, but left the work’s extent and purpose uncertain. A photograph taken by art historian Charles Rhyne in Portland in 1962 supplied the decisive comparison. It recorded original paint and cracks that were subsequently covered by the suspicious passages. Because Pollock had died in 1956, those additions could not be his or have been made with his advice. The photograph established a sequence that a general resemblance of colour could not resolve. It also changed the question facing the conservators. They were dealing with restoration paint lying over surviving original paint, and needed to establish what remained beneath it before deciding whether removal was possible. ^[7]

Scientific examination added several kinds of evidence. Ultraviolet illumination helped map the overpaint through differences in fluorescence. X-radiographs of selected areas showed cracking in original paint underneath additions that extended across undamaged passages. X-ray fluorescence analysis distinguished pigments: in the blue paints compared, cobalt occurred in the restoration paint and was absent from the corresponding original. Binder analysis using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy identified original alkyd and a different restoration resin, poly(vinyl) acetate. A binder is the material holding pigment together; a similar-looking blue can therefore have a different chemical composition. These findings concern the areas and samples studied in One. They explain why surface appearance alone cannot identify its paints. Together, the historical and scientific evidence established both the presence of original paint and a material distinction through which solvents could be tested for selective removal of the later layer. ^[8]

Keeping the painting’s age visible

In May 2013, after nine months of research and work, Coddington and Hickey reported the removal of the overpaint. The original surface was stable, with cracking that generally remained unobtrusive across the whole composition. Their own retouching was restricted to a few deep, separated cracks containing white gesso from the old restoration. Watercolour reduced the prominence of those fills while leaving the cracks perceptible. The canvas’s uneven darkening was reduced with dampened sponges, although discoloration remained. The treatment allowed the painting to retain visible age. The authors connect this approach to changing conservation priorities: cracks once concealed by repainting could now be accepted as part of the materials’ history. The authors also recall lowering it horizontally with curators: on the floor, its scale seemed more directly human, connected to the reach of a working painter. Imagine that change of viewpoint when considering One: the reach of the body, the width of the field and the small scale of individual decisions. ^[9]